Forget about eating out in favourite restaurants and getting bored of seeing sourdough bread trends on your Instagram feed, half of the population in rural India is facing food insecurity.

The majority of the people in rural areas are employed in the informal sector of the economy which provides low wages and low job security. As a result, some families have to allocate almost 49% of their monthly income towards food expenditure (Source).

Food insecurity was a problem in India even before COVID-19 which is evident through the following statistics:

• In the 2020 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 94th out of the 107 countries
• 60 % of rural India can’t afford nutritious diets
• About half of rural children are too short for their age (stunting) and 21% have low weight for height (wasting).
• In the aftermath of the pandemic, Oxfam estimates that an additional 100 million Indians will be vulnerable to food distress.
• According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, the impact of COVID-19 on food insecurity is expected to last for the next 2-24 months.

Since COVID-19 started, the problem of food insecurity has been exacerbated because people have been unemployed; fluctuating food prices and disruptions in supply chains have made food more expensive. Getting access to sanitation products is even harder due to financial constraints. This is making it difficult for people in rural India to practice good hygiene practices such as washing hands with soap and cleaning the house with a disinfectant. This, in turn, can make them more susceptible to contracting COVID-19 and other diseases.

We hope to help them by providing food, sanitation, and medicine kits. Each kit will contain various essential items such as rice, flour, soap, disinfectant and vitamins. The food kit will cost $30 and the sanitation and medicine kit will cost $25. Each kit will be able to help a family for a month.